Not only are they in the fight for podiums and even victories, but there are many who consider that right now they have the best car on the grid despite the fact that the combination of Verstappen and Red Bull continues to lead both championships. But McLaren There will be war this year, and a lot. With the exception of Australia, where Norris gave them their first podium, they had a more hesitant start than Ferrari, but then they picked up the pace and The evolution they brought to Miami definitively launched an MCL38 that was as fast as it was reliable.
The union of both things has made the Woking team constantly in the top ten and is the greatest example of consistency in Formula 1 after the first nine grands prix of 2024. Because, counting both the Sunday races and the sprints (both in China and Miami), Norris and Piastri are the only drivers on the grid who have scored points every weekend of the World Cup so far. There are 131 points for the British and 81 for the Australian for a total of 212.
These numbers make them third in the two classifications, still far from Red Bull, but with Ferrari within reach: Lando is 63 points behind Verstappen and only 7 behind Leclerc, and McLaren, 89 behind the champions and 40 behind the Scuderia. These are very good figures that become magnificent if we compare them with those they had last year at this point: between the two drivers they barely had 29 points and were sixth in the constructors. It is an obvious symptom of the improvement that the papaya team has achieved in one year, surely the most notable of all.
There is only one asterisk that prevents the plenary session of Norris and Piastri: Miami. The Englishman missed his appointment with the points in the sprint (he abandoned after the carom with the Aston Martin at the start), while his teammate failed on Sunday (he was 13th). And speaking of points, there is a race that marked a before and after in the upward trend of those from Woking, that of Canada on June 18, 2023, because it was the last one in which they came out with a zero in their box. Since then, they have been hunting for a year, always hunting some point.
Alonso gets closer in kilometers
As a consequence of the above, there is another section that McLaren leads: It is the only team that has completed all the laps taken on Sundays with its two men, 1,084 in total. And there, there is only one pilot who comes close to the 542 of Norris and Piastri, Alonso, who has finished the nine races although with three laps less in his two most complicated weekends in Imola and Monaco. If we talk about points for grand prix again, there are more drivers who follow in the wake of those from Woking with eight weekends totaling: Verstappen (failed in Australia), Leclerc (Canada), Russell (Australia) and Hamilton (Australia). For all these reasons, and although there is still a long way to go, McLaren is in the lead to win the award for consistency this season.
